What We're Made Of
by scifinerd4lyfe
Summary: The Doctor does not find Gallifrey with Missy's coordinates, and as he and Clara continue to travel together, they must find a way to cope with all they have lost. (New content coming soon!)


The Doctor was bleeding. Hunched over his Tardis console in a state of numbness, he vaguely registered that the _drip drip drip_ he was hearing was his bloody, mangled hand oozing red liquid all over the Tardis floor.

His knees bent a little as his tall frame leaned on the console, his head resting on his left arm and his right hung aimlessly to his side. His breath was shallow, quiet. He felt exhausted, his energy on reserves, his anger tapering to hopelessness. Emptiness.

He was so sure this time. So sure that Missy-the Master-wasn't being cruel this time, throwing lies at him, knowing his kind spirit would spur him to trust her in her last moment. He'd dropped a distraught Clara off. His companion had been completely, utterly shattered, her eyes red and puffy from weeks of crying and grief, made paramount by the sliver of hope the Doctor had given her when they had gone to get Danny back from the dead.

And then she had-as quickly as it came-gotten that hope snatched from her in the Master's cruel, heartless plan, which saw the death of Osgood and almost Kate, too.

The Doctor blinked, still hunched over. Osgood was dead. He'd almost forgotten. A wave of guilt washed over him and he clung to the Tardis for support. Osgood was dead. Kate was probably injured. How many others had been in the plane? Who knew if Clara would speak to him ever again?

And Gallifrey was still gone.

He had typed in the coordinates the Master had given him, trying to keep his eagerness at bay in case it really was a trick, trying to hold in his hope, restrain his tentative glee.

The Tardis had stopped and he stepped cautiously towards the door. What would he see? Gallifrey in ruins? Would everyone he once knew at home be dead, too? Or what if he stepped into the Gallifrey of old? Maybe placing the planet of the Time Lords in another universe bubble had messed with the time of reality on its surface?

Mostly he just wanted to see Gallifrey. Ruins he could deal with. Rubble could be cleaned up. But dead people could not be brought back to life, as he had tried to tell Clara when she...when she...

He stopped his mind thinking about her betrayal. It wasn't really a betrayal. Maybe it was. He didn't want to think about it. Clara's actions had been a grief-stricken grasp in the dark for something better. The Doctor knew grief and what it did to people.

Anyway, when he had opened the Tardis doors to Gallifrey he was not thinking about Clara. Admittedly, he was not thinking about her, or Danny or Osgood or Kate or any of those he had begun to know as his family, those he had traveled with, lost with, loved with, lived with.

At first his brain could not comprehend what he was looking at. Indeed, for a moment he thought that the planet had, in the end, been reduced to rubble and dust, because there was nothing there.

But he looked closer, his two hearts beating almost out of his chest with apprehension, and his stomach sank, his blood turning cold.

There was not even dust. Nothing at all to show that there had once been a planet in this space at all. Not a tiny little bit of rock.

His knees threatened to give way, so he silently shut the doors. They closed quietly and his feet shuffled back to the Tardis console, working of their own accord as his mind tried to understand what he had seen.

Of course, he knew exactly what it was. Gallifrey was not there, had never been there, in the corner of space the Master had so earnestly given to the Doctor. But his hope-hope that he knew he should have kept a bay, given to him so cruelly by a deceptive snake-had been shattered once more, and he could not stand it for one more minute.

His rage was starting to overtake anything he felt now, and he could feel it threatening to burst out of him.

And, in a flash, it did. His right hand flew from his side, hand balled into a tight fist, and came crashing down in a pounding rage on the Tardis console. Lights flickered, sparks flew. The Tardis made a fluttering wheeze.

He brought his fist down again. And again and again and again. More sparks. More wheezing. He barely registered any pain as, in his blinding white hot anger, he vaguely felt the bones in his hand break, shattering his pinky bone, fracturing his wrist.

Again and again he violently attacked the Tardis-his Tardis, his only constant companion, his last friend in the world, his life. And she did nothing. She could have flown away, tried to shake him off by taking off, throwing him to the floor. But she did not. It was almost as if she, too, were mourning for the heart of her dearest friend.

The Doctor, his anger dissipating into deep despair suddenly flung his head onto his arms, leaning desperately onto the console, hiding his face as he sobbed. His tall, towering, lean figure hunched over in a slouch, an agonizing sob groaned out of his throat and his shoulders slumped. His white hair, his lined face, brand new but so so old-his eyes scrunched up tight, too broken to be able to look upon the world.

He was alone, still so so alone. The last Time Lord in this universe.

He did not know how long he cried, how long he allowed his emotions to spill out into the Tardis console room, the only place where he felt safe, where he could well and truly be his whole self.

After a while, though, he just barely registered an ache in his folded back, a dull pain beginning in his right hand and spreading up to his shoulder. It did not hurt, though. Not yet. He was numb. So so numb.

He picked up his head, slowly, painfully from his left arm where it had rested, slowly standing up, the crick in his neck and back causing him to grimace slightly. He turned around and leaned down again, his stiff bleeding hand hanging limply by his side, and sat down, back resting against the Tardis console.

The Doctor did not want to think anymore, did not want to feel. He was tired, so so tired, exhausted by his unusual outburst of raw emotion. He closed his eyes, leaning his head against the console and fell into a fitful, dreamless sleep.

**Thanks so much for reading! I hope to get Ch. 2 up soon! (Where The Doctor will go visit Clara, they'll both lie to each other, and then I'd like to continue on this story through the Christmas special and then on to further adventures, working with the Doctor's reaction in this chapter and Clara's to Danny's death through Christmas and onwards).**

**Really enjoyed writing this with all my favorite things: 12th Doctor and Twelve/whump, Gallifrey canon and now onto Clara/12 relationship (no romance, yes, yes I'm one of those people) and mutual coping.**

**Thanks for reading! :)**


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